"We were in the park, sitting together. Your dog was playing beside us.

'Become mine,' I said.

​'Abandon your doubt, willingly, if you can. Abandon your need to run away, to get into the car and drive, to declare yourself unlovable.'"

​"Ask yourself the difficult questions about your nature and who you are underneath all the skin and moles, the makeup slathered onto your eyelids, sunken into pores so deep that you may never wash it away."